- journal_title：Geology
- Contributor：Russell Drysdale ; Giovanni Zanchetta ; John Hellstrom ; Roland Maas ; Anthony Fallick ; Matthew Pickett ; Ian Cartwright ; Leonardo Piccini
- Publisher：Geological Society of America
- Date：2006-
- Format：text/html
- Language：en
- Identifier：10.1130/G22103.1
- journal_abbrev：Geology
- issn：0091-7613
- volume：34
- issue：2
- firstpage：101
A severe drought in parts of low-latitude northeastern Africa and southwestern Asia ∼4200 yr ago caused major disruption to ancient civilizations. Stable isotope, trace element, and organic fluorescence data from a calcite flowstone collected from the well-watered Alpi Apuane karst of central-western Italy indicate that the climatic event responsible for this drought was also recorded in mid-latitude Europe. Although the timing of this event coincides with an episode of increased ice-rafted debris to the subpolar North Atlantic, the regional ocean-atmosphere response seems atypical of similar Holocene ice-rafting events. Furthermore, comparison of the flowstone data with other regional proxies suggests that the most extreme part of the dry spell occurred toward the end of a longer-term climate anomaly.